Chain 042: Civilization

Chain 042: Civilization
Location: Ancient Era (10,000 BC)
Identity: Drop-In
Drawbacks: [+600] Full Table (x3), One-City Wonder

[100/1600]  Methodology: Economic
[200/1600]  Methodology: Scientific
[Free]      Oral Tradition
[500/1600]  Primitive Screwheads
[800/1600]  View of Ages
[850/1600]  Silk Roads
[1150/1600] Industrial Complex
[1250/1600] Martial Culture
[1300/1600] Tabula Rasa
[1600/1600] Tech Tree
[Free]      The Rosetta Stone
[Free]      The Colossus
[Free]      University of Toronto

Now... this makes for a very interesting time. A world where I start off as a member of a group which is on a globe that I don't recognize, practically in the middle of nowhere. Not only that, but there are nine other civilizations scattered around it. Of course, this wouldn't be quite as bad... except the city we found is going to be the ONLY place we have. No other cities. No other settlements. Nothing.

So what if I blatantly cheated to get an overview of the globe, then wow the locals with some cheap magic effects to get them to follow me? It means we can set the city in a particularly decent place and move forward from there. By which I mean use every single potential thing I can to push these people forward as their leader, getting them to push research as hard as possible. And... okay. Yeah, I'm not going to lie, we're pushing hard toward the science end of the spectrum, and the official currency of the city is the Yggdrasil gold coins that get generated by the ring of Elru.

In any event, yes, there's a little cheating going on. Not a LOT, but... well, a little in the early days goes a long way. The economy was made more robust than it might be otherwise, the planting of certain things like Actraiser's wheat as a staple crop with irrigation gives a mild boost and makes people happier. And tea from the Root of Good Health is a rather popular beverage. Which means a culture boost.

Really, most of what's done is building up the area around the city slowly and dealing with competing civilizations. Trying to keep everything on equal grounds is a challenge, and building a mega-city as the centuries pass is a little more difficult than it otherwise might be. Especially when sharing this particular continent, one of four, with two other civilizations. The trick to this of course is to keep them at war with each other while staying friendly with both and having trade routes to boost my limited economy - any lull in that means they might ally against us, which is as good as death.

The slow buildup of the city's military, in between rushing buildings and trying to create wonders, is effective as long as they're used wisely. It's not the easiest of things, but it's possible as long as things go right - and I can influence some decisions by changing the last few hours in the timeline (thank you once again Achron). With a couple of the earlier wonders being built, amplifying how fast the city's production works, we're able to keep on par with the others.

As time goes by, we keep agitating the two civs as best as possible... until it hits the point that we tech up, wait for a lull in the warfare between the two nations as they lick their wounds, then upgrade our soldiers and send them forth to conquer. Sure, we lose about two thirds of our military in the process over the course of the next couple hundred years... but they lose. Completely lose. And sure, we can't keep their cities... but we CAN turn their cities into settlers, and send the settlers back home to enlarge our city. Which lets us keep the ball rolling and keep teching up.

By the time people from the other continents come to visit, our tech is slightly ahead of theirs, and a few sentinels are posted around the continent's borders. Status quo is pretty easy to maintain after that - soldiers to keep anyone from landing, and eventually ships to patrol the oceans, make friendly relations, trade routes and tech trading. Meanwhile, the city's cultural borders keep expanding, as does the city itself, consuming more of the arable land available to it.

Eventually, it's not surprising that we'd fall behind in the tech race, but that's what spies are for. We don't fall far enough behind that it becomes a huge issue; most of the other civilizations are busy with their own intrigue anyway, considering two continents have two civilizations and the last of them has three. We're free to keep focusing on tech, and eventually we are indeed able to regain our place in the lead of the tech race, even if our military is smaller. But then, our military is all HERE, and nobody can afford a full invasion.

Well, one of them can afford a full invasion after wiping out its only competitor, but everyone's running around in the ocean and weakness is a bad thing to have - and vacating your continent means you're going to be almost completely defenseless when others get bribed to declare war and invade. And while we fell behind in tech for a while, having a megacity that trades with literally every other city on the map means we've got plenty of cash nowadays.

Nuclear war devastates one of the continents when they reach the point of having atomic bombs - apparently one of the three-civ continents stockpiled them briefly, before they saw use in the field, then on cities almost immediately afterward. The devastation that results is... disturbing. Of course the civilization that conquered its continent would invade, but this backfires - the remaining continent, with its two civilizations, formed a pact and invaded the invader himself. His home continent was completely torn apart and split between the two of them, and he was stuck as a weak contender on a nuclear-blasted realm.

(Of course, relations broke down between those two allied nations not long after this, and they resumed their war.)

Other than that... it was essentially status quo until the end. Teching up to Future Tech, launching a spaceship a few years earlier than anyone else might have... really, the main hurdle on THAT was building the ship parts, since there's really only one assembly line while others might have been able to have any of their two dozen cities do it.

Kind of hilarious that I tried to push it as hard as I could and we still only landed on Alpha Centauri in the year 2300.